All The Things That Go To Make Heaven And Earth
by this-tornado
Summary: Episode Four: When Cat Davies and the Doctor find themselves in the right where but the wrong when, mysterious disappearances lead them towards something far more sinister. R&R.
1. Our Time Reduced

"Do I need to do anything else?" Cat asked, holding down the button that he'd directed her to, as she watched him do his usual manic flitting about as he prepared the TARDIS for takeoff.

"Just hold that down," He directed, distracted by the various hundred other things he had to get in precisely the right position, such as jiggling a knob with great concentration, as though it single-handedly would determine whether or not they made it to their destination safely (which, in all reality, it did).

"Where are we off to?" She gave him a face, as he'd neglected to inform her ahead of time, again.

"Well," He started, not quite looking at her as he spoke, "I was thinking you might like to go home now."

"What?" She started; eyes wide as though she'd been slapped in the face. Was he done with her already? Was this only a short term sort of thing? It occurred to her, with such awful surprise, that he might not have meant for them to travel indefinitely. Suddenly feeling deeply silly for having thought that he might like her around for any length of time, she blinked very hard, swallowing. "Oh, I mean, if we're done, then I guess-"

He looked up at her, just as surprised to see the emotion on her face. "What?" He certainly hadn't thought that his offer of being able to see her family would cause such distress. Hadn't meant to do anything more than acknowledge that she had had a life before him, that there were those that she might miss, rocketing about the stars. "I just thought you might like to see them, but if you'd rather we didn't-"

She blinked again, realization slowly starting to dawn on her. "You meant, just for a visit? Like, we've visited everywhere else?"

He looked at her like she was an idiot. "What else would I have meant?"

Dropping down into a seat, she relaxed the muscles that had been so-suddenly tensed. "I thought you were done with me." She explained, though she felt so very silly now, for having jumped to that conclusion.

"Of course not," He protested, feeling suddenly really very awkward by the conversation. He wasn't a terribly emotionally expressive sort, not like that, particularly not when it came to companions, as they had such an awful habit of having to leave him too soon. "I mean, you're free to leave if you ever…" He let that trail off. "But I certainly would prefer- There are so many places I wanted to show you," was what he settled on, continuing to flip switches and set of the controls for lack of anything else productive to do with his hands.

"Good," was all she managed, more than a little uncomfortable with the sudden intimacy of the conversation. "A visit sounds good," She offered, then paused. "Though I have no idea how I'm going to explain you." Her twist of a smile was partly out of amusement at the situation, partly an expression of how awkward their conversation had gotten.

This ride was no less wild than any others; though she'd gotten sort of used to it, however much that it was possible to get used to being thrown about like an ant in a bottle. He didn't quite look at her as they picked themselves up and brushed themselves off, though she couldn't tell it if was from residual awkwardness from the mistaken conversation, or whether he was at all uncomfortable with the idea of meeting her parents. She wasn't sure if that was something that he usually did, if that was something that he was used to, or whether he usually just whisked them off (she knew she wasn't the first, had no illusions that she was something new, particularly not with the amount of female clothing in the wardrobe room) to the stars, never to return. That, of course, was the million-dollar question, wasn't it?

What happened to the other Companions? He'd not mentioned any of them, not by name, nothing other than a casual hint here or there that someone had been with him. She knew he was older by the order of centuries not decades, but she didn't know if he let his partners live out their years with him. Did he just plop them back down, and whoosh off on his merry way? Did he leave them in other places, other times? Or was it something that one chose to leave? That one day, rocketing aimlessly about the universe wasn't enough?

Was that what she wanted? Running about space and time in little circles, forever? But, after all this, could she go back? Could she just pop back to university when term opened back up, settle back down to books and exams, never to see the stars again? It was a sobering reality she didn't want to think about right now, especially not after her recent near escape – there had been quite a few of those, but that had been a little realer, somehow. That she might not actually come back. That he might have to explain to them why she wouldn't ever be back.

Mouth set in a pensive line, not quite her usual enthusiastic delight; she gathered up her coat, zipped up and poked her head out of the TARDIS, stepping out into the drizzle.

It was somehow worse, somehow weirder, to be standing there, walking along streets she knew like the back of her hand than it was to emerge on a planet she'd never heard of; this time, it was her that was out of place, her that didn't quite fit. Because that was the truth of it, really. It was so hard not to concentrate on the fact that she'd been places that she never should have been able to go, now that she was walking through her city, her London. She felt an awkwardness, like a slightly loose tooth she couldn't stop wiggling, standing there, looking at shops she'd spent days in and out of, the grocery where she'd worked a summer.

Not really wanting to hurry to her place, not really sure now, that she was here, that she wanted to go home, not really sure whether it would be suddenly overrun with that sense of the outside, she picked up a newspaper at the nearby stand. "Wonder what I've missed," She offered by way of explanation, ducking under an awning to read the headlines.

He didn't respond, letting her do it her way. It wasn't that he owed her for that scare, or that he wanted to reconnect her with her roots after having nearly killed her, or even that he wanted to meet her family. It was more trying to avoid what had happened last time, trying to make sure that there weren't any secrets, nothing that would fester in her absence. He could see her sudden unease, could sympathize, in a way, with how out of place she looked like she found herself, had seen it enough times to know to stay quiet, to let her sort it out. What he wasn't expecting, however, was her sudden shock, the way she gasped, and then made a face at him, shaking the newspaper. "What?"

"Did you see this?" She demanded, though it was rather impossible for him to read it the way she was tossing it about so. "_September_," She stressed, gesturing to the date at the top of the paper.

"Rubbish weather, but hardly something to get to terribly worked up about," He began, more than a little confused, when she cut him off.

"September of this year," She continued, hand on her hip. "Before I meet you. So I'm still here. In the city. Wandering around. So now I've got to avoid myself!" Because that would be too weird, seeing herself as she'd been before, however short a time ago, so very unaware of what was out there, still a part of this world she was suddenly so awkward with.

But the look on his face, that sudden seriousness in his eyes, told another story, of something far more grim that just a little awkwardness.

"What is it?" She tried to ask, not really sure that had caused that sudden shadow in his eyes, what had dropped the darkness down his face, as she hurried to keep up with him, in his sudden rush back to where they'd come from. "Is it a paradox sort of thing?" That would be bad, at least as far as the movies went.

"Not exactly," He began, not sure how much he wanted to explain, whether more information would only scare her and make the whole situation worse. "It's the fact that whenever you're dealing with events that happen in a person's immediate timeline, there's a chance that you'll change something significant enough, create enough dissonance, that you create a tear in time itself."

"I'm assuming that would be a problem."

"You have no idea." He stopped suddenly, deciding that there was no way he could justify lying to her, not after what they'd already been through. "You tear time deeply enough and it starts to rip itself apart."

"And?" She whispered, having a feeling that this was far, far worse than she'd thought when she'd heard the word paradox, had really only thought that she oughtn't to interact with herself because it would be so decidedly unsettling.

"And it devours everything. This world, its people, everything." There was something almost frightening in how dark his eyes were, in how obvious it was that he'd seen (or done, she couldn't discount done) things that he couldn't explain to her. It was moments like this that she remembered how very old he was, and how much about him she didn't know- how many places he'd been without her, how long he'd been doing what he did.

"Then what do we do?" She looked at him, unsure. They'd run into all sorts of various dangerous situations so far, but none on that scale. And none that would be their fault. But then, that didn't seem new to him, didn't seem unusual enough-it made her wonder a little, it did. Wonder what he'd done that seemed to haunt him; what only seemed to show up in his eyes at times like this.

"We just need to get back to the TARDIS without you running into yourself, or changing anything." He was walking, not running, not yet, but with purpose, a hand on her shoulder. He knew on one level that he was overreacting a tad, as she would have to do something fairly significant to change time enough to start ripping the universe apart, but then, he'd been there, trying to keep the universe together, and he had no desire to repeat the experience. "Do you remember where you were this weekend?" Knowing how to avoid her would certainly make things easier, as he knew that a pre-Companion Cat running into herself post-Companion would be exactly the sort of thing that might start knocking things off balance.

She shook her head, lengthening her stride to keep up. "No idea. It must have been just another weekend, or else I'm sure it would have stuck." They re-traced their steps in uncomfortable silence, doing their best not to interact with anyone passing them. "But we're not all that far off, are we? I mean, how hard can it really be?" She tried for a lightness that had been missing from their day thus far.

And instantly regretted it when the hysterical woman nearly knocked Cat over as she ran from the alleyway, shrieking incoherently about someone having gone missing.


	2. With Matter Removed

"Here," Cat offered the woman the bottle of water she'd grabbed from the supermarket, hoping that she'd finally calmed down enough to explain. Cat would certainly have preferred that this be some sort of mistaken identity situation, that this could be something they could clear up in a minute or two with the right authorities and then be on their way, but she had the sinking feeling that with the Doctor around, nothing would ever be that simple again.

The woman nodded back at Cat, swallowing obediently. Her makeup had run, ringing raccoon-like around tired eyes that didn't seem to want to focus on either of her helpers'. "I should have known better," Her voice was soft, half a broken whisper, half a sob. "Not after the Friedman's boy, not after he-" It cracked, broke on the last phrase, choked on whatever she couldn't face remembering, and the tears started again.

Cat gingerly patted her on the shoulder, looking over her head towards the Doctor, hoping he'd have some magical sort of understanding that would clear this all up.

He didn't, or if he did, he wasn't showing it. Rather, he seemed to not have paid any attention at all to the two of them, engrossed instead in working his way through the newspaper.

Frowning, Cat stared at the front page currently obscuring his face, as if by staring hard enough, she'd bore holes straight through, finally catch his attention. It wasn't like this was a normal occurrence for her, however much she'd adjusted to travel with him – and it hadn't helped that this whole day had been getting off on the wrong foot, more dramatically each time. How was she supposed to figure this out, in time to get back to the TARDIS before she changed time forever and ripped the universe apart, if he didn't _help_ her?

"Just take a deep breath," She started, concentrating on her attempt at comfort. She wasn't a patient person, not particularly, and had never been _good_ with this sort of thing, the intimacy of breaking down in front of others. "I need to know what happened so I can help you." Because that was all she wanted to do: figure out what was going on, fix it, and get back to the TARDIS before she tore the universe apart. Was that too much to ask?

The woman only sobbed harder, pressing her face into a rumpled tissue.

Cat's frowned deepened, as she rocked back on her heels to think. Pressing more water on the woman was about all she could manage, until she decided to cooperate. What was it that she'd said? Something about the Friedman's boy… Concentrating, she tried to remember if there had been any news stories revolving around someone with the surname Friedman, or anyone going missing, but came up blank. It was just such a big city, she couldn't expect to have heard every story, for whatever this woman's story was to have even made the news, much less in any way that she'd remember – part of her, divorced from the proceedings, hoped that it just hadn't made the news. That it wasn't that Cat hadn't noticed, too busy with her own life. Not that that was something to be ashamed of, it was too frighteningly normal for that, but it wouldn't sit right, not after all she'd seen and done with the Doctor.

Her pensive staring was interrupted as sheet of newspaper was briskly shoved under her nose. "Last paragraph." Was all he said, moving over to kneel in front of the woman.

Mildly irritated and wondering what exactly had gotten into him that day, she looked down at the page anyway. There, in small print on the last paragraph: Freidman Case Goes Cold. The even smaller following blurb lacked detail, but even the concise account of the boy gone from a locked home without a trace was chilling enough.

He watched her read, watched the realization dawn on her face as she grasped the obvious connection, the obvious sympathy in her eyes as she looked the woman over again. He didn't want to say anything, didn't want to shatter her illusions, but as awful as missing children were, it wasn't their business, and they oughtn't interfere – not when she was possibly going to run into any number of people she knew, not when there was the possibility that she might rip the world apart. But there was something in her eyes that stopped him, let him agree to go look at the woman's place, begin looking for her child. Agree to pretend he was someone who could help, even if it was only for a moment.

/

Her flat was attached to a small, mildly shabby complex, the sort of place that had once been particularly respectable but had only recently begun to fall into disrepair. She hadn't said much at all on the short walk over, only continued crying as she led them, barely able to do more than confirm their suspicions.

"Now then, Ms-"

"Margaret. Margaret Law," She whispered back, eyes red-rimmed but finally dry, obviously steeling herself.

"Right. Have you tried the police?" He continued, hands in his pockets, slipping, in spite of himself, back into investigative mode.

She shook her head. "They weren't any help with the Freidman boy," here was a worrying tremble in her voice, but she managed to swallow it, "and I know they won't be of any help here." She caught the look in his eye, cut him off. "Don't ask me to explain, Mister-" She paused for a moment, wondering, suddenly, belatedly, why she'd never asked who he was before this, responding only to his general air of authority.

"John Smith." He flashed a piece of paper from his pocket, signifying his credentials as an investigative agent.

"Mister Smith. I can't tell you why, I really can't," that worrying tremble again, the same obvious control, "but its wrong. It just feels… wrong." More wrong than missing her child would, more wrong than anything. Just… wrong.

"Right. Now, I want you to stay here, while my assistant and I give it a once-over. He was in the parlor, you said? Last you saw him?"

She only nodded in response, tossed him her key. Because she didn't know what to do, didn't want to do what she knew she should, because then it would mean it was real. And if it took trusting strangers, however wholesome they might seem - she was fine with that.

"What was that paper you showed her?" Cat whispered, as they went in the front door. There wasn't any need to be quite so quiet, with no one in the house, but it had a hushed, funereal air to it so empty, that she couldn't help herself.

"Slightly psychic paper," as if that should have been obvious, "shows them whatever they want to see."

"Handy." She breathed, looking about the front hall. It was painted a bright, cheery green, exactly the sort of color she could see a woman picking out when wanting to brighten up a slightly dingy little place. And Ms. Law had been right; there was something wrong. She couldn't place it, couldn't explain what it was that she felt, but it reminded her of that feeling she'd had in front of the doorknob of the projection room, that sense that something was wrong in a very important sort of way.

"Something is wrong here." His voice had dropped, just as quiet as hers as he began rifling through those endless pockets for something in particular. "Feels rather like a low-level psychic disruption field, but I can't be sure…"

"Hm?" She prompted, crossing her arms against the mild chill that had set in as they ventured further into the place.

"Faint psychic buzz. Good for warning people away, rather like a…" He searched for the term, finally having pulled out his screwdriver and begun scanning the neat little parlor, "mosquito repellant. Keeps anyone from looking too closely, good for obscuring evidence or misdirection."

The feeling had built as he'd started messing about, increasing the sense of awkwardness to a steady state of mild dread. "I'm assuming you can't pick that up in your local Sainsbury."

He shook his head, continuing to flick his little blue light about, searching for the transmitter. "It's not unusual technology, not really, but not for another several thousand years, so no, this doesn't belong here at all." He crouched, fishing around under the couch.

She flinched as the feeling sharply increased again, to the point where she was barely able to will herself to stay in the room against the sense that she shouldn't, really shouldn't be there. Closing her eyes, not wanting to look the coward, not sure that even further away from the transmitter she could feel any safer than how she did with the Doctor, she breathed a sigh of relief when the tension suddenly broke.

He nodded in satisfaction, having had no trouble at all disabling the thing. It was, on closer inspection, exactly what he'd said it would be. "I'm fairly certain that if we looked, we'd find one of these at the Freidman's place as well. This is not good, not at all."

"I'd gathered." With the tension broken, in a now-welcoming pastel space, it was easy to be smart, easy to pretend that there wasn't anything terribly serious going on.

He looked at her reprovingly over those magically appearing glasses. "Because someone with the technology to hide it is stealing children and I don't know why."


	3. An Honorable Mention

"You should have called me!" The man standing there looked torn between frustration and deep empathy, his hands gesturing wildly with the feeling in his voice.

Margaret only looked up at him. She was more composed than she had been, the sitting having settled her some, but there was enough of that wild abandoning sorrow in her eyes to silence him. "I couldn't." Couldn't admit that Teddy had been gone by the time she'd gotten back from the market, that she'd just known immediately upon entering the house that he hadn't gone off to a mate's to play, hadn't nipped out to the garden on a lark. That she didn't care about whatever time limits the police had, before they'd declare someone missing. That she'd been in, holding Mrs. Friedman's hand enough to know that they'd be no good at all.

"So you let some strangers in instead?" This time, exasperation won out over sympathy. "Margaret, really, I don't know what you were thinking-"

Again, she only looked at him. Sitting there, she'd had a chance to think over how absolutely mad she must have been to pick out a couple strangers and burden them with her sorrow, that she should never have let him in her place – but then that feeling, that faint but overwhelming sense of dread had broken, and that was when it had hit her, that by whatever luck, she'd been right to trust them. But that wasn't something she could explain, and even if she had the words, she doubted anyone as terribly logic-based as he would understand.

"Margaret, I need to talk to you. I need to know if you've seen anything odd lately- absolutely anything, even if it seems silly. Especially if it seems a little silly. But it is very important that you tell me everything-" The Doctor had started speaking before he'd gotten halfway down the stairs, before he noticed that another had joined them. "Who's he?"

"Andy LeStrange, Detective with the Metropolitan Police." Was the curt reply, as he pulled out his badge and a small notebook from an inner pocket of his jacket. "And who did you say you were? I'll need to see ID, please." He wasn't the most immediately imposing man, honestly more hangdog than anything else, but he didn't need a uniform for an air of authority. And he was almost immediately suspicious of this stranger, seeing nothing in the pinstriped suit, the battered sneakers, and the thoroughly distracting hair, which read as particularly trustworthy, and it showed.

Another careless flash of the psychic paper. "The Doctor. Did you call the police?" He addressed Margaret directly.

"She didn't need to. I worked the Freidman case." The tone was a tersely clipped professionalism, the restraint in command of a working officer. "I became acquainted with Ms. Law during the course of the investigation, and swung by with some follow up questions when she explained to me the- ah, current situation." Tact softened, if only slightly, the almost severe line of his face.

"I thought the investigation had been closed." Cat spoke up for the first time this conversation, giving the man a measuring sort of once-over.

"I was not satisfied with the official conclusion."

Those eight words said a great deal about the man, more than he realized, and it was perhaps those words alone that had the Doctor relaxing. "You saw something was off."

Andy nodded, though part of him wondered how it had happened that he was the one being interrogated, instead of the other way around. "Little boys don't just disappear into thin air."

"Well," The Doctor looked like he might have had a story for that, but stopped himself. "You were right. There is something very, very off about this." He looked across his companions, taking in the three different degrees of worry and concern.

"Than what's going on?"

"I have no idea. Absolutely no idea." He didn't seem perturbed at the lack of faith this would inspire in his listeners. "But I'm going to find out."

"Where did you say we were going?" Andy demanded, partially out of breath from dodging through the rush-hour crush.

"You have the Freidman file on you, yes?" Was the Doctor's non-response. They were back to classic mode, with the running and the talking quickly, so it was about time for his pulling-a-brilliant-plan-out-of-his-back-pocket trick.

"Yeah, I brought it with me to Margaret's. Now, where did you say we were going?"

"Somewhere safe. Well, safe as we're going to get. Well, safe as we're going to get so I can track them." There was a risk that the TARDIS might actually be easier for them to find, what with the general signals it sent out about itself, but if he was going to be caught anywhere, he'd rather be caught in the thing than without it.

"Who, exactly, is _them_?" He continued his questioning, not really trusting any of these strangers, not yet, following more to keep an eye on them, to watch out for Margaret.

"I need to confirm." There was a hint of something in his voice, a something that didn't sound pleased at all with what he expected to confirm.

"Then it's not good at all, is it?" Cat didn't seem to want to let Andy take over the questioning for her, and needed the verbal confirmation of what she could hear in his tone.

"Not at all." But then, there really wasn't a way for it to have been good news.

Cat, distracted by trying to keep up after she'd nearly been felled by a particularly enthusiastic tourist's elbow, managed to run smack dab into a man's turned back. "So sorry, excuse me, really sorry," she murmured absently, still not paying that much attention until the man turned around, obviously startled by her sudden intrusion into his person space. "Sorry-" She started, before finding herself staring into particularly familiar hazel eyes, standing out on a freckled face she knew all too well-

He'd stared back at her, just as frozen for a moment, before disappearing back into the crowd. And she'd stood there, staring at the space where he'd been, for a good long moment before a hand closed on her elbow, jerking her back to reality.

"I did say hurry, didn't I? Just like you humans, picking now of all times to go sightseeing-" The Doctor hadn't been overly worried, but the last person he wanted to lose track of was Cat, as he hadn't forgotten in all the fuss that she still wasn't supposed to be here, but his tone snapped to the serious the moment he realized how white her face was, how large her eyes were in the pallor. "What happened? Did you see yourself?" There hadn't been a shorting-out of the universe, so she obviously hadn't touched herself, that was obvious enough, but even just a good long look-

"No." She shook her head, half to signal her response, half to try and shake her back to the present. "I saw Nick."

"Did he see you? Had you met yet?" He concentrated the less personal, not exactly able to discuss her feelings at seeing him alive again were while they hurried back to the TARDIS to investigate child-stealing aliens. But he couldn't help the lesser relief in his voice, a slight relaxation of his pose. That could have disrupted her personal timeline with the boy, but it was unlikely to tear the world apart.

"Yes, and no. But, you know what I just remembered?" She looked up at him, as if needing absolution for having forgotten this, having forgotten anything to do with him, trying not to fidget from a sudden, phantom wetness on her sleeve. "The first thing he ever said to me was 'Don't I know you from somewhere?' I never thought twice about it, figured I just had one of those faces- but I guess this explains it, doesn't it?" There was a slight need for reassurance in the upturn of her sentence, in the way that it became a question where it didn't need to be.

"I suppose so." He wasn't all that certain that that really had been the first thing he'd said to her until she'd run into him before meeting him (time travel was funny like that), but he didn't say anything. If it had corrected her timeline like that, with his comment, than it meant that it definitely didn't change anything enough to tear the universe apart, which was rather relieving, really. He already had enough to worry about as it was.


	4. Midnight, Who Lost Control

The TARDIS was where they had left it, tucked behind a fence in a small alleyway, looking as terribly out of place as it always did. "Good. It's still there." Cat breathed, taking a brief moment to catch her breath now that they were within sight of it, and therefore safe by association.

He looked at her, as though the possibility that it might not have been there had only just occurred to him. "Was that an _option?_" He didn't want to think about the last time his TARDIS had been taken from him, not now-

She shrugged, not exactly the most knowledgeable about what as possible and what wasn't where time machines were concerned. "The way our day is going?"

Andy stood there a moment, his hand resting on Margaret's shoulder, though the sight of the mostly-empty alleyway had grip tightening protectively. "Wait a minute, what are we doing here?" There wasn't anything of note, so unless they were all about to pile into a dumpster, he had that sinking feeling that they'd just been played. And to think he'd almost trusted that stranger, had seen something in the fast talking that showed that he knew what was going on at least, which was more than could have been said for anyone else-

The Doctor didn't bother looking at him, going straight for the doors instead. "If you hadn't noticed, I have a great deal more to worry about than explaining things to you."

Andy looked surprised, though whether it was from the dismissive response or from the blue box that he could have sworn he hadn't seen until just then. It was as if his eyes had just slid off, the way water did off a duck's back, but then once he knew it was there, it had always been there- it was just another of those things that he couldn't explain, that buried there at the edge of his consciousness, that itched, that meant he had to reconsider too much- it was like having a constant, low-level headache he'd caught right along with the first case, that had only continued building there in the back of his mind.

Cat had turned to make sure they were following, caught the look on his face. It was written there, in huge, bold letters exactly what he was thinking, and she knew what it felt like, knew it a little too well. But then, it hadn't been quite this gradual for her, so it wasn't like she'd had the ability to pretend that it all made sense.

He didn't seem to notice her until she touched his shoulder. He looked down, about to brush her off, not wanting to talk to someone who had so very clearly accepted everything that that Doctor-person had said, but something in her eyes stopped him, something in the sideways twist of her mouth that said, clearly enough, that she knew. Knew what it was like to have that logical foundation (however shaky it might in reality be) yanked from under her feet. He opened his mouth to speak, to ask some sort of question that wouldn't actually do anything to help clear it all up, but she just shook her head, jerked it towards the box.

So he followed her, because it made the most sense of anything that had happened that day, as sad as that seemed to him at the moment. And because Margaret had gone in, and he couldn't leave her, not alone, not when she was so buried in the unbelievable.

Margaret had already followed, not seeming to need any sort of reassurance, not having any sort of crisis other than the one she was already having – without her son, she didn't care what else was thrown at her, as it couldn't be any worse. She had no room for more cerebral crises when her foundation was already gone, when she was already floating.

It was to the point where she didn't react when she stepped into the impossible box, didn't seem to really process the massive inside and the elaborate, inexplicable machinery. "Mister Smith- Doctor, I don't know- Just-"

He turned, eyes locking to hers, something in them steady, but almost harsh in the undilution. He'd never been one to sugar-coat or soften to protect the feelings, however much he might empathize, and it showed. "Doctor."

She didn't question the name, didn't care as long as he brought her child back. "You said you think you know who did this."

"I just need to confirm."

"Is my son still alive?" Her eyes were huge in her face, that wild, abandoning sorrow so close to the surface.

He looked at her, that dark gaze too intense by half, something hidden under that control, something just as wild and abandoning. "I can promise you I'll find him."

She nodded, accepting what he didn't say as much as what he did.

/

"This is-" They were interrupted by Andy's sudden shout; that snap from the disbelieving. He was standing there in the doorway, incredulity written in every line of his face. It was exactly the right sort of impossible thing, incontrovertible but containing only possibility. "I just can't- how did you- its- its-"

"It's bigger on the inside. There you go. Now we can get back to work." It was a little rude, that was true, but he didn't exactly have time to coddle anyone right now, gushing over the impossibility that was his daily reality. Part of it was also the shoving of that tiny, wild, abandoning thing that had shown in his eyes away, locking it back down where it had come from, hidden away.

"What are you doing?" Cat dodged her way up to the main console, where the Doctor was obviously in the middle of setting something up.

"Triangulating the source code." He looked up at her through glasses that were rapidly sliding down his nose, his hair working its way towards thoroughly askew as he ran hands absently through it. "Why are you looking at me like that?"

"You look rather like Mr. Lovato. Taught science my fourth year." She tilted her head, picturing his hair whiter, and with more of a pouf. She hadn't made the association before, hadn't exactly spent much time pondering fourth-year science lately, but something about his current expression…

Something soft and bright crossed his face briefly, nothing more than a memory, but at the same time, there was something else there, something quick in his eyes, something more painful there, right under the surface. "I taught science once. Well, physics. Physics. Phys-_ics_. _Phys_-ics. Phys-"

"What _are_ you?" They'd rather forgotten about Andy, standing there in the middle of the room, staring up at that impossible ceiling.

"The Doctor." Whatever had been there, both that warmth and that sudden, sharp splinter of something, were gone, broken by the reminder of where he was now, though there was a residual harshness to the reply. "I travel in space and time, in my TARDIS. It is also bigger on the inside than it is on the outside, in case anyone's forgotten."

"You _are _rude today." Cat commented, raising an eyebrow. She was curious, so very curious, about what had been lurking there. She'd been wondering about the fates of his previous Companions earlier, and something about what had been on his face there, had her wondering if maybe that was her answer/

"Rude and not ginger." He ran another hand through the hair that was almost, though not quite standing straight up. It was bothering him, it had been bothering him, the why the TARDIS, generally so reliable, had dumped them a month and a half early, but then, it had probably just been the result of a crossed signal, of something as simple as that- after all, anyone with sufficient technology to toss about field-disrupters was someone that would be throwing out plenty of signals, and none of them that belonged. So the answer was only more questions, the who and the why, and it was all getting far more serious than he had expected when planning to drop by for a visit. Even if it was this chaos he thrived off of, he didn't like that it was children, that it was the innocent, and it was all enough to make someone a little bit rude, not to mention that quick, oh so quick reminder of what he had lost-

Lost in his own thoughts, he flapped a hand at Cat. "You might want to step back there; you'll only get in the way."

Normally she might have complained about his dismissal of her abilities, but it was obvious enough in the way he'd looked at her there, that she wasn't the one that he was annoyed with, and so she decided to let it go, quietly stepping back to the edge of the platform, out of the way.

She turned, looked over her shoulder at their (what should she call them? Momentary companions? Fellow investigators? Visitors? Nothing seemed to fit quite right, encapsulate the mix of wonder and terror that was their life) standing there. It was amazing how seeing them there, in the TARDIS for the first time, struck home for her how used to this all she'd already gotten, how far she was from the Cat that had stepped so gingerly between the doors that first time. Would she ever really fit back down where she'd been? Be the _Catherine Davies_ as she'd known herself to be? Would she ever _want_ to?

"What, exactly, is he doing?" Andy's investigative instincts were back in his voice, now that he'd had a moment to recover. It had all snapped into place, really, standing there, looking up at what shouldn't be, what couldn't be. Too much had been wearing thing, official explanations passed down without a thought as to how well they'd age, too much with this case in particular, gnawing at the back of his mind. But what more could he think impossible, once having seen this? He paused for a second, looking at her, really looking at her for perhaps the first time that day (that terribly eventful day). "And if he's the Doctor, who are you?"

"Triangulating the source code, whatever that's supposed to mean. All I know is he's trying to confirm whoever he thinks planted the field-disrupter. And I'm Cat Davies. Sidekick extraordinaire." She leaned against the railing, watching the Doctor bustle about, doing what he did, nibbling thoughtlessly at her lower lip.

"I'm amplifying the signal and using it to locate the transmitter." They'd forgotten that, being only a few feet away, he was perfectly capable of listening to their conversation. Dusting off his hands, as though finally done, he stood in front of the recess he'd slipped the metallic object into, gave a final adjustment to his screens, and flicked the switch.

Nothing seemed to happen for a moment, as the binary scrolling across the displays continued as they always had. But a breath later, as soon as it had occurred to them that something had gone wrong, that there was nothing to find, the TARDIS surprised them all by listing suddenly sideways, the center columns moving to that familiar, peculiar rhythm.

"No! No! No!" There was something like actual alarm in the Doctor's voice, in the way he was frantically flicking at switches and dials, obviously trying to counteract whatever had just happened.

"Where are we going?" Cat clung to the rail like her life depended on it, decidedly unnerved by both the sudden takeoff, as with his reaction to it. Everything was alright, everything could be perfectly fine, as long as he seemed to know what was going on. But if he didn't…

"I don't _know_," was the less-than-reassuring reply, made even less so by the way he was whacking away at the dashboard.

"What in the bloody hell is going on?" Andy half-stepped, half-fell down the stairs, reaching for the similarly-alarmed looking Margaret.

"They were quite a bit cleverer than I thought they would be. This would be them tracing back the trace we'd sent out, and using it to pinpoint our location." He gritted his teeth against another disconcerting tilt. "And then overriding the parking brake, to bring _us _to_ them_. Which they should _not_ be able to do, oh no."

"That is not good at all." Cat offered from the floor, having decided that she was safer the less distance there was left to fall.

"Not in the least."


	5. This World, Who Lost Control

The movement ceased as quickly as it had come, the sudden silence more ominous than it was comforting; something deeply unnerving in the casual way they had just been plucked from the surface to be deposited absolutely anywhere. Cat lifted her head up carefully, peering over the edge, wanting answers, the simple reassurance that came from being something less than blind, something less than lost. That he might not have these answers immediately, that there might be things that he couldn't just explain away and make ok did not occur to her, and would only have made things worse if it had.

Thankfully, if that time was to come, it was not now. He had gotten up faster than the rest of them, somewhat more used to the graceless departures, hands moving over controls with a slightly desperate quickness as he reassured himself that his TARDIS, that his machine, his impossible world, his _home_, as much as he had one at all, was unharmed. Relaxing slightly, he looked up, catching her questioning gaze with eyes too dark to read, giving her nothing but a lack of alarm; a quick nod of acknowledgement, the barest sort of comfort.

But it was all she needed, didn't need to know that they were safe, because they never really were, and she had all she needed in that quick little nod, in the steady way he went about figuring it out. Slightly unsteady on her feet after the shock of their controls being overridden (had it ever occurred to her that that was possible? Had he ever said that it wasn't?), she joined him, taking a certain amount of security from the nearness.

He didn't need her to ask the obvious question, seeing it clear enough in the tilt of her head as she looked at him. "We are… exactly 35,786 kilometers above the surface of the earth." He gave her a quick moment to process, waited for the realization to dawn on her face. "Yes, we're in orbit. Whatever we're on seems fairly stationary; they only needed to bring us up to their level."

"Spaceships over London?" There was a certain amusement to the twist of her lips, in spite of the seriousness of the situation, somewhat because of the seriousness.

There was an answering something in his own face, though bolder there. "It wouldn't be the first time."

"What?" It was Andy's voice, though it had lost what officious tone it had had left, with an undercurrent of that unfamiliar waver of fear. "Can you repeat that?" He wasn't dumb, had heard everything they had said, but he needed to hear it again, needed it confirmed to some degree before he could process. It was just so much, so much in one day, however long the foundation had been laid.

"They've been stationary over London, as best I can tell from here." He was leaning over screens on which a language no one else understood scrolled, though it was obvious from the furrow in his brow that there was a great deal more he wanted to know that it was not answering. "But there's something wrong with that."

"What do you mean?" Cat caught on fairly quickly, having had ample time to learn to read his face.

"The engines. I'm getting some abnormal signaling here, but nothing definitive." There was something there, something that for the briefest moment suggested that he knew more than he was willing to say, but it passed quickly enough. "But we don't have the time."

"What are we doing, then? Do you have some sort of plan?" Andy helped Margaret to her feet, her obvious shakiness adding to the grave lines on his face. It was unusual for him to look for such direction, but at the moment, he was more than over his head, so completely out of his league he wasn't quite sure where he stood any more (though, somewhat literally, he did have no idea where he was – 'in orbit' meant nothing to him, not in a concrete sense, they might as well have said the moon for all it resonated. The fact that they could very well be on the moon did not occur to him, and it would not have helped if it had).

Now that he knew that his machine was all right, and that his companion (and etcetera) were fine, there was something more of a bounce (if it could be called that) to the Doctor's step – after all, rightly or wrongly, this was what he thrived on, that sense of adventure. So he only looked over his shoulder at the group of them, having safely tucked away the glasses and flattened his hair just enough, and gave them one of those edged half-smiles that only served to remind them how very alien he really was. "No."

Cat found something of an answering twitch to her own lips as she looked back at him, edging out the fear. It was probably sick, it was probably the sort of thing that had anyone else seen, they would have wanted her checked out for- but the fact was, she couldn't help but feel it too, if only just a little, that sudden rush, that thrill, about being about to walk out, having no idea what could be waiting for them; despite the quiet sort of fear that curled around underneath, that wormed its way across the bottom.

\

It was almost a little disappointing how much the room that waited them looked like her idea of a spaceship, all chrome and smooth white walls, nearly empty except for a small control set over to the side, a low wall in that same smooth, unbroken white hiding any occupant (but it had to be empty, should be empty- the room was too quiet, far too still, for anyone alive to have been sharing it with them). Cat pressed close behind the Doctor, unease setting in stronger than she might have expected. She'd been prepared for squads of angry aliens, for some sort of military or hostile presence, had almost welcomed the idea of getting it all out there, in the open like that - but this? This was wrong. Who would bother putting so much effort into calling them there, not to bother seeing who they were? The room was too clean, too connected, for it to have been a prison…

He didn't speak for another moment, taking the chance to run the screwdriver across the expanse of room, his own private suspicions only further confirmed by their lack of a greeting. Pausing for a moment over the readings from the console set, he frowned, glancing quickly over to Cat, to make sure she was still paying attention, before warily moving closer.

She stuck closer still, not wanting to step on him or get in the way, but at the same time, not about to let him get any further away than he had to. Those extra feet weren't about to make any real difference if anything should happen, but she felt better, knowing he was there. She wanted to speak, wanted to ask him what was going on, what was with the lack of anything, but didn't dare break the silence until he did, that brief thrill from stepping out onto a proper spaceship (because the TARDIS wasn't, as beautiful as she was, a _real_ spaceship) quickly dissipating in the oppressive gloom. It reminded her far too much of that projection room, of those few moments of building dread before everything that she'd thought she'd known had gone straight to hell, and she didn't like it at all.

The console was set out rather like a dashboard, stretching in a gentle curve around the seating, still in that almost funereal unbroken white, only those small, flickering lights to cut the oppressiveness. The only sound was a white noise from what was clearly a speaker system, the soft crackling doing nothing at all to lessen the atmosphere, only serving to remind her of every movie she'd ever seen with taglines about no one being able to hear you scream in space-

He reached out towards the seat that had been turned with its back to them, needing no more than the gentlest touch to set it turning back around-

Cat let out a sigh of relief when it continued to spin. Though it wasn't quite as empty as the room it sat in, the chair was marked only with a smear of something colored and dust-like, and she assumed it fairly harmless. Something in her had been convinced that there would be something so much worse there, whether it was a body or… well, she didn't want to complete that thought.

When he started to turn to look at her over his shoulder, she hid the rest of it in a discreet sort of cough, not wanting to look like the sort of person who would get all weirded out and hysterical over an empty room. But then, she couldn't help but be reminded of the last room she'd thought was empty, and whether or not this was only another game of cat and mouse-

"What's going on?" It was somehow easier to have it be Andy's voice that broke that silence, something so very rough and ordinary about it, however obviously uneasy he might have been. He hadn't needed police instincts to tell him that the silence was wrong, standing there in the TARDIS doorway, unconsciously posed to run the minute something happened, very deliberately keeping his body between Margaret and the room.

"Where are they?" There was something sharp, if brittle, in her voice as she pushed past Andy to stare those faded eyes right through the Doctor. "Where are they that took my son?"

The Doctor didn't have a chance to respond when the speaker system, so quietly crackling, burst into life.

"_Welcome, transport bay twelve_." The voice, there was something off about the voice, just as there had been something off about the room – something far too strong, something undiluted and harsh, but hidden under a perfectly pleasant sort of female voice. "_We apologize for the delay and any inconvenience it may have caused. Please hold_."

Margaret looked like she might have wanted to say something more directly to what seemed to be the source of all her pain, having been slapped in the face by the alien equivalent of a recorded message, but the Doctor cut her off with a warning look.

"Seems like a lot of trouble you went through to bring us here just to stick us in a transport bay." His voice was that iron-control sort of casual that Cat had come to know so very well, something in the way he leaned against the console to return the page managing to convey that he was only so very offhand because he was more than capable of handling whatever was going to be thrown at him. "Not even going to bother to meet us?"

There was the briefest of pauses, as though the voice hadn't quite expected the reply to be so nonchalant. "_We can assure you that your visit is our highest priority_." There was something that had Cat's teeth clenched in the way that was phrased, the contrast between the flight-attendant speeches and that cold, hard edge.

"Did that mean something?" Margaret had turned to the only one who seemed to know anything at all, with that hard edge to her voice doing its best to cover the sorrow that threatened to overwhelm her. Nothing had changed, despite all the running and the questions, nothing that really meant anything, at least. It had almost been enough distraction; as much as anything could have been distracting enough to forget what she was missing, the way it ached like a phantom limb, a hole rent straight through her entire self. But here it was too much, here she couldn't ignore the fact that she would know, soon enough, know if he was still- She couldn't complete the thought, shied away as though if she didn't think it, it couldn't be true.

The Doctor looked up at her, unreadable as he ran the streak of dust through his fingers. "Yes, it meant quite a bit." What, exactly, he did not elaborate, only turning towards the doors to the transport bay expectantly.

They didn't have to wait long.

\

**AN: I had intended this episode to be a little bit longer, to sort of make up for the delay, but its turning out rather longer than I'd intended. Hopefully no one minds!**


End file.
